I'm Judging You (12 page)

These people are seriously sitting around like, “Why do I need to stop painting myself black, red, brown, and yellow for laughs? Why do we need to change the racial slur that represents our sports franchise?” Here's why: because it's what good people do. They care about our feelings of hurt and pain, attached to centuries of denigration, genocide, slavery, smallpox, and every terrible thing that happened on this continent ever.

It all comes down to white people going out of their way to keep up traditions (
their
traditions) because that is what they're comfortable with. Let's remember that slavery and bondage of people of color, with beatings, rape, and slaughter, was a centuries-long tradition as well. Some things just need to be done away with.

While we are here, I want to remind non-Black people that NO, you cannot say “nigga.” I know you didn't use the “-er.” I know it's part of that song you really like, or your best friend is Black, or you adopted a son from Malawi. STAHP. Just stop it, right this moment. Yes, Black people might say it to each other, but
you
cannot. Words used within a marginalized group are not always appropriate when used by an outsider. We should know this already. Some members of the LGBTQ community use the F-word that rhymes with “bag” as a term of endearment. If my heterosexual ass used that word? I should be kicked in the shins. That is not
my
word to use; I don't have the right. Why? I am a member of the privileged class that has used that word to belittle gay people, so I cannot use it, no matter how many gay people do. Same with the word “bitch” and women. If a man refers to me as such, I might wanna elbow him in the chest. People who are in marginalized groups can define how they want to use words that have been historically derogatory. They can reclaim them as they deem fit.
You
sit it out, because you don't even go to this school. So cut this whole thing out. The fact that we
still
have to have this conversation is just mind-boggling, and it makes me want to lay my burdens down under a blanket.

You might be wondering, “Luvvie, how can I stop you from judging me?”

Forge some real friendships with people who don't look like you. Stop saying you don't see color and acknowledge your privilege. Also, if you've already figured all of this out, check your friends and family who have not. This is your farm, and those are your sheep. Gather them and tell them to get their shit together. Then I will stop judging you. Maybe.

 

9. Zamunda Is Not a Country. Neither Is Africa.

It was my first week in the United States, and I was nine years old and unsure of what I was doing at school. I thought we were just visiting this country. Nobody had told me we were leaving Nigeria to go live in America. (We didn't call it “the United States.” I knew it as “America.”) Apparently, this wasn't going to be like the other time, when we came for two weeks; we were here to stay. My mom dropped me off at school, and the principal showed me to my classroom and introduced me to my teacher. Mrs. Chu pulled me in the door and told the class to say hi to the newest student. Then she turned to me and told me to introduce myself.

For the first time in my life, I wanted to hide myself. It was the first time I had ever been “the new girl.” I mean, in Nigeria I had it so good that the headmistress of the private school I went to was my mom's best friend. In fact, my best friend's grandmother owned the school, and I had been attending it since I was two years old. So being the new girl
anywhere
was a brand-new experience. I was further betrayed by my strong Nigerian accent, which othered me immediately from my new classmates. For someone who had never had to feel like an outsider, coming from a place where everyone looked and spoke like me, it was jarring. It also didn't help that at lunch, when everyone else pulled out sandwiches from their bags, I pulled out a bowl of white rice and stew. Later on, I needed a pen and asked someone for a “Biro.” I minuswell
11
have had two heads.

Growing up in Nigeria, where I wanted for nothing, I was raised to be proud of who I am. I come from a family that is well known and very respected, and I was raised to walk into rooms with my head held high because I belonged in whatever room I wanted to be in. I did not know what it was really like to doubt myself until that day, standing in front of my fifth-grade class, when I learned what it was like to have the most visible part of my identity also be the very thing that people thought was different and wrong.

At nine years old, I felt the effects of the false perception of Africa as a single entity with a single story as I navigated the new world of middle school in a new country where no one knew
my
story. They just knew I was the new African girl with the weird name and weird accent. People projected clichés onto me, asked me stupid questions, and made me feel like I had to defend my culture: “No, we don't have lions in our backyards, and yes we wear clothes.” And when people would add “mon” to their sentences directed at me (“Hey, mon!”), I would wanna throat-chop them. JAMAICA IS NOT IN AFRICA, DUMBASSES. NOT THE FUCKING SAME. At least try to get the continent right! Is Google Maps busy? Well, Google Maps did not exist then. I did not know that in America being African was thought to be joke-worthy. I did not know folks would think I'd be primitive in any way, so when I heard the “African booty scratcher” jabs, I learned for the first time the stereotypes that people thought of when they saw me.

People thinking Mama Africa is a big jungle and one giant country makes me so mad! It makes me want to cunt-punt a plush teddy bear across traffic at rush hour. I am judging us for the terribly misleading and narrow views we hold about the cradle of civilization.

Anyway, as kids are so good at doing, I adapted. I learned to mimic the way my American friends spoke, and by the time I started high school, my Naija accent was mostly gone. I no longer sounded like a proper aje butta
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Ibadan girl. I was officially a child of Chicago.

Even more significantly, I also stopped using my first name outside my house, because people made it ugly and heavy. I am Yoruba. My name is Ifeoluwa, and I love it and I wanted to protect it fiercely. It means “God's love,” and it is made up of five syllables that might look confusing at first glance, but really, slowly spoken, is no tongue twister. E-FE-OH-LOO-WAH. But when people used it, it took on a sound that was unrecognizable. Soon I was going by the nickname my aunt gave me: Lovette. By high school, I was no longer pegged as a foreigner, and I blended in very well. It was a matter of pride for me, because this West African girl was not so glaringly
African
anymore. At that point, I couldn't even mimic my Naija accent if I tried.

That cheap delight in forcefully integrating myself ended when I got to college, when I met fellow African students who were unabashedly proud and spoke in their accents unapologetically. Ghanaians, Ethiopians, Nigerians, Eritreans. They embraced their cultures, and their very existence helped to diffuse whatever lingering shame I might have felt. I ended up becoming vice president of the African Cultural Association my junior year. It was a long journey to reclaim my pride in the very part of my existence I had been shamed for.

My classmates were only reflections of a larger world that considered being African a liability because they had no understanding of the complexities of the second biggest continent in the world. All they knew was a one-dimensional Africa, and I blame the media for a lot of this.

Some years ago, I stumbled upon an episode of
Nightline
wherein the topic was an exposé on African children who were accused of witchcraft. I sat there knowing I would not be pleased with what I was about to see, but I watched anyway because the remote control was on the other side of the room. Also, I'm a glutton for punishment. The program showed children who were crying while being held by their parents as they went through exorcisms. They showed a naked child who was getting hot wax poured on him as he writhed like a snake. While the elders on my screen were rebuking the children for their supposed witchcraft, I rebuked
Nightline
, then summoned the strength to go get the remote and change the channel.

The stories the media chooses to present shape our distorted views of Africa. Of course this show highlighted barbaric behavior, naked people, an interpreter, closed captioning because no one there could speak English, and, of course, flies buzzing around. All they needed was Sally Struthers in the background looking on disapprovingly and they would have hit Africa Story Bingo.

Of course I also forget which country this exposé took place in. All I remember was that it was in Africa, and that is by design. Why should we care what area of Africa it took place in when it's just one giant country anyway, AMIRITE?

The media is complicit in Africa's monolithic story being told, amplified, and considered gospel by the world. How can you paint such a flat, broad portrait of a place where there are more languages and cultures than I can count? How can you sing one tune when you should be having multiple concerts? It's incredibly lazy. Africa has a PR problem, and Olivia Pope needs to handle it.

I begrudge the mainstream media's obsession with seemingly “uncivilized” Africans. Between the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, and these “investigative reporters,” we only seem to be told about the Africa that is disease-ridden, poverty-stricken, and without any sense of modern-day living. The kids with the dusty hair and flies buzzing around their heads are the mascots. Let the press tell it: no one in Africa thinks bras exist. All they ever show are the women with the free tits and men with the Pinocchio wee wees. MTCHEW!
13
Cameramen, and the audience, sit there observing them like they're fish in an aquarium. It's on some “Crikey! Let's watch the African in his natural habitat” crap. I do not like it one bit.

I'm not saying they ought not to show the forests in Africa and the people who wear fig leaves and nothing else. Their lives are valid and their stories should be told. However, it should not be the only aspect of the Motherland that is depicted. Methinks these portrayals are ridiculous, misleading, and counterproductive when they are used to define the continent. Have you ever seen a special about the continent that was about city life? Hell, show
one
house that isn't made of mud and I may be slightly appeased. Haysoos
14
be some different viewpoints for the media and Africa.

On the other side of the distorted story is the appropriation and cultural theft of many things African, which undermines the entire “they are barbaric” thing. If we're so ass-backwards, then surely you shouldn't feel the need to look to us for new trends. As we're being shown on television as people who don't wear clothes, high-fashion designers are using ankara and dashiki fabric for their latest collections. Our geles (head ties) from Nigeria are being imitated, and folks are making YouTube videos to teach Westerners how to rock them. Louis Vuitton is selling replicas of the red/blue/white plaid bags we call “Ghana Must Go” for a thousand dollars. They retail for about a hundred naira (which is like seventy cents) at Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos, Nigeria. It is a weird combination of appreciation, fetishization, and contempt. We're interesting and modern when our cultural markers are being co-opted but we are barbaric when it comes to how our stories are being told.

Our cultural symbols and identifiers are appreciated only when they profit people who don't look like us. We, as African people, are
studied
but not
seen
. Our beauty is viewed through a Western lens. You either have to be dark as midnight and unmistakably African to be considered beautiful or you better not think that wide nose and angled face with prominent cheekbones makes you pretty. Many of us have gotten the “You don't look African” remark because we don't look like Alek Wek. Others have gotten it from people insinuating that not looking African is some kind of compliment, which is incredibly insulting. “You're so pretty! I would not have guessed you were African.” BISH, WHAT? Thanks for not thinking I'm like those other Africans. You know, the ugly ones. People can suck sometimes.

It's fascinating how bold people are about their ignorance of Africans, Africa, and anything related to it. Usually, people try to keep their stupidity subtle but not with Africa, though. Why try? Some of the questions folks will ask are so rude that replying rudely is perfectly acceptable. I got these questions from classmates when I first got to the United States, but I've also heard some of these questions from adults, full-grown people who should know better. Some folks know more about the gahtdamb moon than the continent that is only ten hours away from them by plane.
HOW, SWAY?

For my fellow Africans, here's a handy Q&A response guide for you to use next time someone hits you with one of these frequently asked queries:

Do you have cars where you're from?
Who needs cars when you have goats? That's perfectly good transport! For extra-big people we use baby elephants.

Do you wear clothes at home?
Yeah, we wear clothes in Chicago. Oh, you mean in Nigeria? Nah. The only time we wear things like pants or anything that covers our asses is when we have to ride our goats. Since it's so hot, the leather saddles heat up and can cause third-degree burns. And we only wear shirts when we have to go to church to worship the god of the moon. Sundays are honored by showing no nipples, so we put on our leaf tank tops to pray.

Yes, we wear clothes.
Many of us even have seamstresses who make our clothes and also our aso ebi [Yoruba phrase that literally translates to “clothes of kin”] for special occasions like weddings, birthdays, Wednesdays, etc. This is why you see family pictures of us all wearing matching fabric in different styles. We are about this
alphet
15
life! We also wear jeans and T-shirts and suits. SURPRISE!